Abstract
In this paper, we examine spatial resolution downscaling transcoding for H.264/AVC video coding. A number of advanced coding tools limit the applicability of techniques, which were developed for previous video coding standards. We present a spatial resolution reduction transcoding architecture for H.264/AVC, which extends open-loop transcoding with a low-complexity compensation technique in the reduced-resolution domain. The proposed architecture tackles the problems in H.264/AVC and avoids visual artifacts in the transcoded sequence, while keeping complexity significantly lower than more traditional cascaded decoder–encoder architectures. The refinement step of the proposed architecture can be used to further improve rate-distortion performance, at the cost of additional complexity. In this way, a dynamic-complexity transcoder is rendered possible. We present a thorough investigation of the problems related to motion and residual data mapping, leading to a transcoding solution resulting in fully compliant reduced-size H.264/AVC bitstreams.
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Notes
Note that I frames contain only NDM (intra-coded) macroblocks, and are re-encoded to maximize quality.
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Acknowledgments
The research activities that have been described in this paper were funded by Ghent University, the Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology (IBBT), the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT-Flanders), the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (FWO-Flanders), and the European Union.
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Communicated by Thomas Haenselmann.
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De Cock, J., Notebaert, S., Vermeirsch, K. et al. Dyadic spatial resolution reduction transcoding for H.264/AVC. Multimedia Systems 16, 139–149 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-009-0180-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-009-0180-2